Episode 2 – The Soviet Army

Greetings, Tovarischi! This episode is about the Soviet army, it’s military might and the trials and tribulations of the common soldier – as heard from those very common soldiers. (And, of course, historical background and information on this as well.) Leave your comments below, and don’t forget to tell everyone about this podcast.

Also, I recommend you to go and listen to the Naval History Podcast, by Buckner F. Melton jr. because that podcast really deserves more attention. You can do that here: http://navalhistorypodcast.com/

And to make the lawyers happy: The intro music is a fragment from “My Army” by the Red Army Choir, and the epilogue is from “She thinks herself immortal” by Jim Rooster, used under the Creative Commons licence.

Great podcast! I enjoy it a lot. I am fascinated with Soviet life. I am 65 years old, and I lived thru a large part of the Cold War. My wife and I had the good fortune to travel to Russia twice in the last three years. When something would go wrong on our trip, the guide would say, TIR, this is Russia, nothing ever works like you expect.

Hi!
Interesting stuff! I recall my parents and their generation told of Soviet soldiers during the second invasion of Hungary (November 4) who were from Central Asia and places like that. They were so ignorant that they really believed they had come to liberate the people of Egypt from the “Imperialists”. They didn’t know enough to differentiate between the Danube and the Nile!!! (Kinda looks different, don’t you think!)

Having conscripts wonder through a nuclear detonation zone was not just a Soviet thing. In the 1950’s the US Army had its conscripts walking through the Nevada desert right after a nuke had exploded. Like the Soviets this was to convince the men that nukes were not so bad, in fact you could just walk around the ground shortly after the thing went off.

The difference with the USA was the men just walked through, no war games, just a stroll through the Nevada desert. Maybe afterword the men got to gamble away there paychecks in Las Vegas. The tests were not too far from Sin City and the residents could clearly see the flash and hear the explosions from the test site. They even had a bit of shaking too.

Long story short, decades later some of the Troopers came down with cancers and other diseases linked to radiation exposure. And true to form on our side of the Iron Curtain the government was in complete denial that any problems existed. It was “diseases, what diseases? Everything is fine, why are you complaining and dying on us?

But eventually, after enough men died, and our news agencies getting a hold of that fact, the government was forced to admit the problem. Bad luck for the guys who died before the government finally confessed.

Thank you so much for sharing this AMAZING experience with all of us! My husband, daughter and I started sponsoring a little boy, Hassan, from Bangladesh earlier this year! I'm so excited to be doing this and hope that some day we will get to make the journey to meet our child! Can't wait to read about the rest of your week 🙂 May God continue to bless this wonderful journey for you!

The movie you referred there is not The Hunt for the Red October [1], that one is about a Soviet Navy Officer that defects to the US taking with him an experimental stealth sub. It’s based on a novel by Tom Clancy [2]. I very much like that movie (and novel) by the way, but the movie you really referred to was K-19 The Widowmaker, with Harrison Ford [3].

Loved the episode but you got something wrong, I’m an American hockey fan and it was the USA who played the Soviets in the miracle on ice game in 1980. That game is a big part of American hockey culture.

Dear Kristaps,
Thank you a lot for this great show. I would like to indicate that (probably rather unfortunately) Armenian radio was not a real broadcasting entity, but a fictional one, that allegedly existed in Yerevan and made this funny remarks, sometimes quite political. So it existed only is jokes (анекдоты)